«What great madness, poor citizens! Do you think the enemy has left? Or do you think that the Danaans can give gifts without cheating? Is that how you know Ulysses? Either Achaeans are hiding in this wood, or this machine has been built against our walls to spy on our houses and come down on the city from above, or some other deception is hidden; Trojans, do not trust the horse. Whatever it is, I fear the Danaans even offering gifts.
Laocoön in The Aeneid – Virgil
Bitcoin poses an existential threat to fiat and the status quo in general. Taking away from governments the possibility of expropriating value through inflation, and from elites in general the privilege of the Cantillon effect, is an affront of historical dimensions. Removing the need for intermediation in digital operations from financial institutions undermines contemporary financial power structures.
While they ignored and belittled it at first, the moment the elites realized that Bitcoin was becoming a nuisance that wouldn’t go away on its own, they began to attack it. They began to say that it was a scam, that it was money for drug traffickers and criminals and other smear campaigns. They also attacked cryptocurrency companies both legally, through lawsuits and arrests, and by closing their bank accounts.
Donald Trump himself, in his first term, participated in this defamatory strategy. But in his second term he realized that there was no point in swimming against the current. Rather, with all the capital this industry was attracting, it could be very favorable to get in its favor. Or at least in appearance.
In chapter XVIII of The Prince, titled How princes should keep their promisesMachiavelli writes:
«He must ensure that they consider him pious, clement, good, faithful in his dealings and lover of justice; he must also make himself worthy of this reputation; but at the same time be master enough of himself to act in a contrary way when it is convenient.»
The Prince – Nicolas Machiavelli
This quote entails the fundamental distinction between being and appearance in politics, between essence and appearance. For Trump, it was enough for his purposes to appear to be favorable to Bitcoin. Thus he gained financing and support from multiple industry leaders, who trusted that Trump was making it worthy of the bitcoiner reputation. Almost 50% of corporate election spending came from cryptocurrency companies, raising around $197 million.
This appearance also served to put investors and entrepreneurs on his side, who hoped to profit as much as he and his family did with the issuance of completely useless memecoins, as well as with confusing announcements, such as altcoins being placed in the supposed strategic reserve, as well as others more direct, such as the family investments that helped add more millions to their coffers.
And you could say that Trump knew how to fulfill almost all of his promises. Freed Ross Ulbricht. He lobbied until Gary Gensler resigned from the SEC. Regulatory persecution of the cryptocurrency industry has ceased, although the developers of Samourai Wallet remain detained. In theory, it prevented the United States from selling the 328,000 bitcoins it seized, although it is still unclear what will happen to the 94,000 BTC that a judge ordered returned to Bitfinex.
But beyond that, after the executive order was signed to create the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, little else has been done about it. The last time Trump spoke about the Reserve was on June 12, 2025. And although Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reaffirmed at the WEF in Davos the commitment to creating the reserve, there are still no concrete plans for accumulation and Bitcoin has been progressively disappearing from presidential speech.
Instead, altcoins and stablecoins have taken center stage. Although the issuance of CBDCs in the United States was prohibited by law, they did this because they did not need it: with stablecoins they already had their CBDCs spread throughout the world, even more so with the requirements demanded in the Genius Law. From the beginning this was the intention, as established in the second Purpose of the Executive Order to Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology:
“Promote and protect the sovereignty of the United States dollar, including through actions to promote the development and growth of legal and legitimate dollar-backed stablecoins around the world.”
Executive Order to Strengthen American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology
Before the Trump administration, the movement toward dedollarization was going strong. There was talk of a multi-currency world, in which the dollar had lost relevance. But the Trump government, partly using stablecoins, managed to stop that momentum and restore the hegemonic place of the dollar. Even the CEO of Tether, Paolo Ardoino, even said that USDT was key to counteracting the de-dollarization of the BRICS.
As we have established in the past, stablecoins are already assets of the US government. And about altcoins, they are completely harmless to the fiat system. Yes, banks are wary of how stablecoins could affect their business model. However, from the government’s perspective, stablecoins continue to deepen the hegemony of the dollar in the world, and the rest of the crypto companies are businesses that ultimately help increase national GDP, do not affect the fiat privilege system, and ultimately help strengthen the dollar.
It makes sense, therefore, that among the 35 members of the Financial Innovation Advisory Committee of the United States Futures and Commodities Commission (CFTC) there is not a single Bitcoin company. Although Bitcoin was the first crypto asset to be considered a Commodity and there was no doubt that it was under the jurisdiction of the CFTC and not the SEC, Not a single Bitcoin-focused company is listed, exclusively altcoins. Neither Strategy, nor Strike, nor Mara, nor Swan, nor Unchained, for mentioning the Americans.
This exclusion of bitcoin is deliberate and is part of an obvious process of invisibility. Bitcoin was used as a decoy, like a Trojan Horse to deceive the industry and only keep what did not represent an existential threat. This is why so much space is being given to custodians, exchanges and other KYC spaces where bitcoin (BTC) can be controlled and monitored.
When we talked about traditional finance wanting a sterilized Bitcoin, we were referring to a process of annihilation. Etymologically, annihilate means to reduce to nothing, to de-essence, to remove the essence. In Bitcoin it is essential to be peer to peer, among equals, without intermediaries. But now we are looking to introduce intermediaries in every place we can. This is the way in which, as a State, you beat Bitcoin, not by destroying it or physically preventing it, which is impossible, but by reducing it to a shell in the hands of custodians, the bitcoin asset without the Bitcoin network.
Thus, with the appearance of adoption by the United States government, several things have been achieved: attracting campaign financing through the illusion of adopting Bitcoin, de-essentializing Bitcoin in the public eye by reducing it to just one of its properties (reserve-of-value asset) and strengthening the role of fiat, specifically the dollar, in the world, through stablecoins but also through crypto companies.
If the United States had actively promoted the purchase of BTC for its reserve, the story of this market cycle would have been different. Above all, because the narrative on which the price increase was built was precisely that Bitcoin is a store of value similar to gold, backed by the expectation of the Strategic Reserve. Since the state accumulation through the Strategic Reserve had not materialized, this narrative was left half-finished, and the upward momentum was out of gas. We are not saying that the Bitcoin Reserve plans will not be fulfilled. The very reality of Bitcoin’s growth will make it inevitable that this and other Reserves will come to fruition in the future. However, when it comes to this cycle, the lack of visible actions weakened the growth potential.
It is curious that, at this time, when nothing serious has happened, at least not a systemic crisis like that of FTX in the last cycle, the fear and greed indicator has reached levels of extreme fear, only reached when the pandemic was declared.
Probably, That nothing happening is precisely what is serious. The market has horror vacui, they are afraid of the lack of narratives. If bitcoin is not behaving like gold, as a safe haven, what is it? Why would anyone want it?
This fear results from the fact that the narrative that was “bought” was not realized. But also from the deliberate deepening of the asymmetry of knowledge by reducing Bitcoin exclusively to a store of value: having momentarily «failed» the dominant narrative, people sell in panic ignoring all the other things that Bitcoin is and why it continues to have value.
Bitcoin remains, above all things, a peer-to-peer exchange network. A network open to anyone, without the possibility of censorship, that allows you to send and receive value in a matter of minutes or even a second to and from anywhere in the world. Bitcoin remains an unmanageable network with robust consensus rules that offer predictability over the issuance schedule of an asset in absolute scarcity. Bitcoin is an instrument that serves in the way needed for whoever needs it, when they need it, how they need it, without a third party being able to say anything.
Therefore, despite the fact that short-term devices are being woven to strengthen fiat and weaken Bitcoin in the public opinion, in the long term, Bitcoin will continue to win. Each cycle has already shown it: with each setback that takes its toll, it comes back stronger. With each expulsion of tourists, comes the time to build a more robust architecture that cements more valuable narratives, which attract more and more relevant actors. And it will continue to be that way because what gives it value is its network. This Trojan Horse limps, but the Bitcoin network walks on its own legs.